Amco - here is your car with the orange vinyl bonnet, although you'll have to take my word for it... I thought this was the first time it raced but it may well have just been the first time I saw it race. Even then it was clear the car was one out of the box with it's very high quality presentation. It had some Guthrie Bowron sponsorship which probably related to the amount of paint it had on it.
Shano.......I have never seen that photo, is it one of yours. We do have a lot of pictures of the car in the BNSW days, some black and white some colour but different ones keep turning up. Could you f/w that picture to my Email site....bentley6@xtra.co.nz I am not sure whether I can print off the site page.....my computer skills are pretty basic to say the least.
...From my Memory of Rod the Collingwood,thats him standing directly behind the Mini in the 'Fastman' racing overals...................But!!!?.............regards Thunder427/MJOriginally Posted by Shano
Amco - here is your car with the orange vinyl bonnet, although you'll have to take my word for it... I thought this was the first time it raced but it may well have just been the first time I saw it race. Even then it was clear the car was one out of the box with it's very high quality presentation. It had some Guthrie Bowron sponsorship which probably related to the amount of paint it had on it.
PS;last time I had dealings with Rod Collingwood, he was managing the Christchurch Town Hall,driving a SLR5000' on a permantly mounted 'Trade Plate'........Traded/Sold this car(never been registered/as 'NEW') Purchased Graeme Vautiers ,1970-1/2 Camaro / 'Motion Performance' modified.........he asked me into his office,one Thursday ,(1974/50) where he draw a giant picture of a Tack on his White Board,sketched in some measurments and proceeded to tell me that this was todays ............'Plan of Attack'............!!!!?
My job was to refinish the 'Vautier/Crown Motor Court' Camaro 'S.H.I.N.N.I.N.G' BLACK ,Black that you could read your watch in and ..."I want to drive it next Friday night to a 'party" !!!!........7 days?????......but I shall save that story till later........................regards thunder427/MJ
Last edited by thunder427; 06-30-2011 at 01:51 PM.
Do you know I could hardly brush my teeth last night, I was laughing so much thinking about Roger. But hey arent the bike boys a bit like that, a bit different, a bit of rebel in there, and they sure as hell arent BORING. Ok,a bit of lateral thinking there, now back to the yards. Tony Shelly's place in Wellington another of our yards with motorsport connections. Tony used to team up with Ray Archibold and do the long distance events in the Jaguar. My only involvement with Tony was in 1977 when I was selling my 1966 MK2 3.8 Jaguar and had advertised it as being the last 3.8 imported into NZ. Tony rang me to question my claim and pointed out that it was in fact HE who had the last MK2....that is before the 240 and 340. I asked him to lookup the ownership papers and check when the car had been first registered in NZ, and he came back with 10th December 1966. I told him as diplomaticly as I could that my car had been first registered on the 31st December 1966......couldnt get much later than that. The car, a black 3.8 on wires was a special order for Harvey Hingston in New Plymouth....it had no overdrive and a high-ratio diff....apparently Harvey distrusted O/D gearboxes. The whole thing has come a complete circle as the current owner has the car in Lyall Williamsons International Motorsport garage having among other things, an overdrive fitted. You cant win. Just as an aside, Harvey was principle at Opunake [I think] school, and as a dentention used to get the kids to clean the chrome wire wheels!!!!! Some punishment, and better than writing out 100 times 'I must not swear at the teacher'. Buy the way, the personised plates ...67 Jag....now fitted to the car are incorrect. It is a '66 model. Its original plate was....FF52. Now, why would anyone want to change from a black plate, on a black car with that distinctive number to one of those terrible white things, and yes, I do know who the culprit was and he should have known better! Another car I should never have sold. Unfortunately I got more speeding tickets in that car than all the rest put together, so I just got pissed off and Jerry Clayton took it off my hands for some miserable figure...$5,750. Storey of my life, selling things too soon.
Does anyone remember Henry Philips. He had a small yard down by the lake in Rotorua. He was a keen Jaguar man and was always involved in the JDC rallies at the long weekends at Easter. Henry bought and sold a number of interesting sports cars so I suppose we could say he had motorsport connections. At one stage he had a very nice 1960 MK1 2.4 Jaguar saloon which didnt exactly have much performance and is universally decried by the Jaguar brigade as 'not being a proper Jag'. Well, maybe, but my Dad had one in the early sixties and, no it didnt have the get-up-and-go of a 3.4 but it was a very sweet and comfy touring car. I must be the only person who likes them because they all seem to have disappeared, not been thought of as collectable. my Dads car was bought by Christchurch business man Ron Barrow and my Dad was its second owner......was pale blue and was the first 2.4 sold by Archibolds in 1959. Hope it has been saved and restored by someone. Getting back to Ron Barrow, he was clearly a bit of an entrepreneur as he had imported the XK120C that I bought some years later from Des Wild. Ron had tried his hand at racing the XK, but was so shocked when he wore out a set of tyres at one Wigram meeting that he retired then and there!!
Ron Roycrofts' garages at Glen Murray used to be a mecca for all racecar/sportscar enthusiasts back in the 60's and 70's and probably beyond. Not sure whether Ron had a dealers licence or not but he certainly bought and sold a lot of cars...interesting cars. When I first visited him in 1967 I was driving a Fiat 1500 Crusader, and the first thing Ron said to me as I got out of the car was 'at least you know what a good car is' !!!!!!! I had recently traded a Morris 1100 in on the Fiat, otherwise he might have thrown me out if I had turned up in something else. At the time I was looking for an early SS Jaguar to restore and I knew that Ron had the only 1932 SS1 coupe in the country. It was mostly complete except for one rather essential item....the engine. Apparently it had been repowered at some stage with a Chev 6 motor.....the original having disappeared. Lots of SS cars were repowered, often with Chev 6 motors; OHV and far better than the dreadful sidevalve Standard lump that was part of the SS deal Lyons had with Standard. The lack of engine didnt faze Ron one bit, and he suggested all sorts of things that could be installed. Ron was a great Chev enthusiast and I suspect that he had bought the SS to get the engine for one of his projects. Anyway the job was too big for me, and even at $150 decided not to buy it. Ron eventually sold it to some turkey in Hamilton, who in a fit of enthusiasm proceeded to strip the car to the last nut and bolt. The last time I saw it, the body was in the guys vegetable garden and the chassis propped up against the fence. Eventually I think it all went to the tip....should have bought it, a very rare car nowdays. Sometimes Ron was very hard to converse with as he was very deaf, probably through testing aircraft engines and race car driving, and his hearing aid was either not turned on or the batteries had gone flat! Unlike Sybil Lupp, Ron wasnt too concerned about how his cars looked....some were pretty rough, he was more interested on how they went. I will say this though, all of Rons cars were under cover, the old Jaguar engined RJR was parked in an old bus body out on the roadside, while the rest were in various sheds, old and new on the property. I feel very lucky to have met and chatted with Ron on a number of occasions which says much for this modest man that he was prepared to speak to someone as insignificant as me. I didnt attend the auction of his collection when he died, but I always had my eye on his very early 1923 Bentley 3 litre...think it went overseas.
Charlie Conways motor emporiams, first down the Gt North road, then Symonds street were always good places to check-out when I went to Auckland. He had nice showrooms with lots of desirable machinery to look at, and he owned a Cooper single seater race car as well, so his connection to motor racing was sound. I purchased a Triumph TR6 from Charlie in 1981 and while I enjoyed driving it, it had the bad habit of not starting if left standing for more than a few days. Good old Lucas fuel injection was the culprit. Another case of the Poms getting it almost right but not quite. There was some pretty sloppy workshop practices at BL [or what ever it was called then] and I remember Triumph 2.5 PI saloons in Jan Wilds' Triumph dealership in Cambridge, undergoing warranty claims, after having done only 1500 miles, having their injection pumps overhauled. Something about swarf not being cleaned out prior to assembly! My cars problem was the fuel pump itself which always struggled to get up enough pressure. It was powered by a glorified wiper motor and overheated regularly. I guess owners today have the problem sorted out.....a bit like the Triumph Stag from the same source whos V8 gave trouble in the early days. Angus actually repowered a Triumph 2000 Estate with a Rover V8....a tight fit especially getting the extractor exhaust to fit. It went very well and the Rover engine was actually lighter than the original Triumph motor. Wonder if it is still around. Back to Charlie. I only met him a couple of times so there must be someone out there that can do justice to this entrepreneur.
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